Mozilla Announces Long Term Support Version of Firefox

mvar writes "After a meeting held last Monday regarding Mozilla Firefox Extended Support Release, the new version was announced yesterday in a post on Mozilla's official blog: 'We are pleased to announce that the proposal for an Extended Support Release (ESR) of Firefox is now a plan of action. The ESR version of Firefox is for use by enterprises, public institutions, universities, and other organizations that centrally manage their Firefox deployments. Releases of the ESR will occur once a year, providing these organizations with a version of Firefox that receives security updates but does not make changes to the Web or Firefox Add-ons platform.'"

Comments

Re:Enterprises Will Like This!

[acoustix]

FrontMotion Firefox Community Edition has a MSI version that can be pushed out via GPO and also has adm/admx templates available.

Re:Enterprises Will Like This!

[SteelZ]

Now if there was only a way to control/deploy this through group policy, then Firefox in the Enterprise will really take off.

Run "Firefox Setup.exe -ms" to do a silent install or if you must have a .msi, download it from these guys

Re:Did they fire Asa?

[Rogerborg]

Sadly no, the ADHD Kid is still jumping up and down and shrieking about how great it is that there are (at least) 4 major versions currently on the go. I only wish I were joking about that.

Re:Oh good. ANOTHER browser to support.

[Lennie]

1. It is only one version to support and you can run it next to the latest version of Firefox. I would think this is a good thing if it keeps the people that do not what all those changes on the same older version instead of, some users on 6, some users on 7, some users on 8.

2. What you are looking for is called the "Add-on Compatibility Reporter":

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/add-on-compatibility-reporter/

It was obviously meant for a different purpose, so with that name it makes it kind of hard to find.

Re:Good

[deadsquid]

The Thunderbird team is talking about an extended support released on their mailing list. There's more info on the Mozilla Wiki, but it is being planned.

Re:Enterprises Will Like This!

[deadsquid]

It actually says "The ESR is specifically targeted at groups looking to deploy it within a managed environment. It is not intended for use by individuals, nor as a method to mitigate compatibility issues with addons or other software. Mozilla will strongly discourage public (re)distribution of Mozilla-branded versions of the ESR." Mozilla software will remain freely available. The ESR is not targeted at individuals, and the changes to addon compatibility (compatible by default) and updates (silent/background) in the next 18 weeks will hopefully address a lot of the issues people have with the regular release. In the end, it's up to the individual to choose, but the installers will be available to download if you really want them.